Photographer:
Lyndal Wilson

Behind the scenes with Bendigo filmmaker Brendan Cherry

One of Brendan’s signature film-making techniques is to hold his tripod upside down with his DSLR attached, getting it as close to the ground as possible, then running towards his subject. He has perfected the art so that there is smoothness in the motion. He then flips the shot in post- production.

That’s what he loves about filmmaking: the endless challenge of “trying to get that cool shot, trying to get something that gives a new perspective on something,” he explains.

So, in his video of mountain bike riding through the bushlands of Central Victoria, he follows the action over water, through forests, over bridges and boulders capturing the action while running, cycling and from up above with his newly acquired quad copter.

Inspired by his favourite film director Peter Jackson, almost as famous for his behind the scenes vlogs as for the Lord of the Rings movies, Brendan also likes to share the passion of his craft with others. You can even see him climbing a tree to retrieve an action camera that has fallen from up above.

Brendan first got into film making at the age of 11. He started by making claymation videos and then got into making short films, and has stuck to doing that for the last eight years.

He prefers making fictional films and is a big fan of the fantasy crime genre; but in the last three years he has branched out to documentary style or events as he refers to them. That’s how his video of RC (remote controlled) cars came about.

Brendan made his video at the dirt racetrack at the back of the Baptist Church in Junortoun not far from Bendigo. He interviews remote control car enthusiast Pete Wilsher for ABC Open’s My Crazy Passion project. Pete’s love of these cars and particularly the short course trucks has led him to not only race them, but tune, modify and even paint them.

I asked Brendan about his tips for filmmaking:

1.Watch a lot of films: Brendan is a big fan of watching films. His favourite online video maker is American cinematographer Devin Graham who is known for his extreme sports videos. He also gets a lot of inspiration from watching behind the scenes videos to understand how each shot was created.

2. Recreate you favourite scene from a film: This is for the truly committed. Brendan told me how in Yr 10 he had a class exercise to recreate a three-minute video from a movie scene. He and his classmates chose Sherlock Holmes. They studied, every single shot, every single angle, lighting, costumes and even the lines. Not being able to find any actors, they even starred in their own production. The end result was that they learnt a lot of techniques and Brendan noticed a considerable improvement in quality after that exercise.

3. Think about your structure: For a short three minute film Brendon likes to start with a 15 second slow introduction to set the context of the film—then at the 15 second mark he has his “big bang” with his best shot. After that, it’s a matter of carefully spacing out your good shots so that people have a reason to keep watching. You need to work hard to keep your audience there.